Am I right in thinking that Ableton is good for controlling synths and patch management etc? That would certainly be handy for me in a live setting.

Yeah and No, I have often remapped controllers live while I'm playing cos it's so easy (click any on screen control, twiddle/press a midi controller, done) but most software is like that these days. Sending midi is also pretty simple, once you've set the prefs. Patch management, well in terms of virtual synths that works pretty well, patches can basically become seperate instruments. As for the management of patches of external instruments, well that's pretty crap tbh (bordering on non existent really) but it's not summing I do really.